The Mass Observers

A History, 1937-1949

James Hinton

Description

This is the first full-scale history of Mass-Observation, the independent social research organisation which, between 1937 and 1949, set out to document the attitudes, opinions, and every-day lives of the British people. Through a combination of anthropological fieldwork, opinion surveys, and written testimony solicited from hundreds of volunteers, Mass-Observation created a huge archive of popular life during a tumultuous decade which remains central to British national identity. The social history of these years has been immeasurably enriched by the archive, and extracts from the writings of M-O's volunteers have won a wide and admiring audience.

Now James Hinton, whose acclaimed Nine Wartime Lives demonstrated how the intensely personal writing of some
of M-O's volunteers could be used to shed light on broader historical issues, has written a wonderfully vivid and evocative account which does justice not only to the two founders whose tempestuous relationship dominated the early years of Mass-Observation, but also to the dozens of creative and imaginative, and until now largely unknown, young enthusiasts whose work helped to keep the show on the road. The history of the organisation itself - the staff, the research methods, the struggle for funding, M-O's characteristic 'voice', and its role in the cultural and political life of the period - are themselves as interesting as any of the themes that the founders set out to document. This long-awaited and deeply researched history corrects and revises much of our existing knowledge of
Mass-Observation, opens up new and important perspectives on the organisation, and will be seen as the authoritative account for years to come.

The Mass Observers

A History, 1937-1949

James Hinton

Author Information

James Hinton has published widely on the social history of twentieth-century Britain. His early work in labour history included The First Shop Stewards' Movement (1973) and Labour and Socialism (1983). A spell of intense political activism in the 1980s anti-nuclear movement was reflected in Protests and Visions: Peace Politics in Twentieth-Century Britain (1989). Turning his attention to the 1940s, he has published three monographs on contrasting groups of active citizens: Shop Floor Citizens: Engineering Democracy in 1940s Britain (1994); Women, Social Leadership and the Second World War (2002); and Nine Wartime Lives: Mass-Observation and the Making of the Modern Self (2010).

The Mass Observers

A History, 1937-1949

James Hinton

Reviews and Awards

"The Mass Observers is academic history at its very best, meticulously researched and uncompromisingly intelligent, but telling a story with narrative skill and populating it with characters who come to life on the page." --Paul Addison, The Literary Review

"The result is a manageable and accessible work, and one that should appeal beyond academe and quite appropriately for a study of [mass observation] to a broad readership." --Family and Community History

"In reconstituting the missing history of MO, Hinton's account is comprehensive in its ambitions and its achievement... [T]his book provides important missing information about the structures, personalities and means through which this ambition was achieved." --Cercles Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone